The weblog of Norman Geras

September 09, 2006

The Momma 'n' Daddy Collection 68

I used to listen to Guy Clark a lot, but until recently when Amanda of Flop Eared Mule drew my attention to this one, I didn't know of a Momma 'n' Daddy song by him. He's not previously put in an appearance in the series. Time to put that right with 'Randall Knife'. It's a talking song and absolutely mainstream M&D:

My father had a Randall knife
My mother gave it to him
When he went off to World War II
To save us all from ruin
Now, if you've ever held a Randall knife
You know my father well
If a better blade was ever made
It was probably forged in hell

My father was a good man
He was a lawyer by his trade
Only once did I ever see
Him misuse the blade
Well, it almost cut his thumb off
When he took it for a tool
The knife was made for darker things
And you could not bend the rules

He let me take it camping once
On a Boy Scout jamboree
I broke a half an inch off
Trying to stick it in a tree
I hid it from him for a while
But the knife and he were one
He put it in his bottom drawer
Without a hard word one

And there it slept and there it stayed
For twenty some odd years
Sort of like Excalibur
Except waiting for a tear

My father died when I was forty
And I couldn't find a way to cry
Not because I didn't love him
Not because he didn't try
I'd cried for every lesser thing
Whisky, pain and beauty
But he deserved a better tear
And I was not quite ready

So we took his ashes out to sea
And poured 'em off the stern
And then threw the roses in the wake
Of everything we'd learned
And when we got back to the house
They asked me what I wanted
Not the lawbooks, not the watch
I need the thing he's haunted

My hand burned for the Randall knife
There in the bottom drawer
And I found a tear for my father's life
And all that it stood for

Now, I know I have sometimes raised an eyebrow about some of the lyrics featured here, but you shouldn't infer from this any lack of seriousness on my part about the value of the Momma 'n' Daddy musical tradition. And you couldn't ask for a better encapsulation of one key strand within that tradition than the closing words of the above song: 'And I found a tear for my father's life / And all that it stood for'.

[The Momma 'n' Daddy Archive, containing all the details of the series, is here.]